Baby Orangutan’s Paternity Test Has Surprise Worthy Of Maury Povich

A baby orangutan clings to her mother at an enclosure in Ragunan zoo in Jakarta on January 27, 2011. Orangutans are far more genetically diverse thatn thought, a finding that could help their survival, say scientists delivering their full DNA analysis of the critically endangered ape. The study, published January 27 in the science journal Nature, also reveals that the orangutan — ‘the man of the forest’ — has hardly evolved over the past 15 million years, in sharp contrast to Homo sapiens and his closest cousin, the chimpanzee. Once widely distributed across Southeast Asia, only two populations of the intelligent, tree dwelling ape remain in the wild in Borneo and Sumatra islands of Indonesia. (ROMEO GACAD/AFP/Getty Images)